Houston McLaury-

During one of my spring semesters at Gustavus, some high school friends and I drove a good four hours to Wisconsin for a friend’s birthday party. We found a cabin on the shore of Lake Superior that would be 50 miles from Duluth and 50 miles in the opposite direction from the nearest gas station. No matter which way you look at it, this place was isolated.

And yet during the drive up, my friends and I noticed an advertisement that kept repeating 20, 40, maybe even 60 miles away from Minneapolis. A man with outstretched arms surrounded by big black letters shouted “Guaranteed Offer” at us through the landscape and forests that we passed through towards the cabin.

Now, why do I care about this particular ad? Well, there were hundreds of miles that I could see during my drive: beautiful sights of the lake, Duluth with its cliffside to the west and city to the east. Yet it speaks to a greater issue that I see more and more ads in weird places as each day progresses. In Kroger grocery stores, some aisles with display glass now have screens that play advertisements over them to squeeze just a little bit of revenue out of your gaze. Online, 15-second ads play over five-second videos, and it seems that every aspect of our lives is being polluted by these inescapable marketing ploys.

The main reason I am so strongly against the billboard advertisements that line a lot of the highways I traveled on is that they blocked a lot of the scenery that I wanted to see. This visual pollution that I was subjected to during my trip made me question how far away we truly were from our destination. Every single time I saw that man on the billboard with the red background and the bold letters shrouded in black, I questioned how far we had truly gotten on our journey.

It felt as if I was losing my mind during the drive because every few miles I would see his face, sneering at me, taunting me, dangling an escape before my face – yet I could never truly reach it. Now, there is a case to be made for some advertisements, namely the ones that highlight food and gas stations to stop at if you’re exiting the highway. This is a small form of advertisement that is quick and generally along the side of the road.

But that 50-foot tall, hundreds of feet wide billboard that sneers and smiles and mocks me as I drive… I know we as a society do not need that. It pollutes our vision and makes every place feel the same when most towns have a unique area and history.

The other two forms of ads I mentioned are just as insidious. One for the sake of convenience, the other one for what it means for our future. The advertisements that block videos online fall into one of these concerns, mainly because it poses an accessibility issue when videos get unskippable ads. Since it’s free entertainment, I understand why there must be some ads but sometimes I get incredibly irritated due to the length of the ads that I receive in comparison to the video I will be watching. This should be amended in some way to prevent ads like this from covering such short videos. Begrudgingly, I acknowledge that ad revenue is often necessary for entertainment.

I just cannot forgive Kroger and the optimized ad space that they were willing to put onto display cases. If something as simple as glass in grocery stores -something meant to view the products one wishes to buy- is up for grabs for digital advertisement, where will it end? At what point do we draw the line when these advertisements make their next big advancement? Someone must give, either the consumers and their peace of mind or the corporations and some semblance of sanity in this rapidly insane advertising world.

Throughout this piece, I have been begging for advertisements to lessen, to see away from any and all ads. But, please know that I understand that advertisements will never go away, not in the current economic system that we live under. I just want it to be better. I want there to be beauty in the wilderness that is not blocked by a billboard, I want to be able to see the things I am looking for inside of a display case without being advertised a Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme over my shopping, and I just want there to be an easier way to see and be and exist without constantly being bombarded by advertisements. Is that really too much to ask?